


The In-Between Moments

by demonsonthemoon



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Arospec!Jehan, M/M, Pre-Sexual Content, background unrequited Grantaire/Enjolras, by which I mean no dick is touched but there's definitely not enough space between them for Jesus, idk - Freeform, this was meant to be a PWP and then exposition happened and then banter happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 03:13:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17779520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonsonthemoon/pseuds/demonsonthemoon
Summary: Jehan and Grantaire find each other in those in-between moments between love and friendship, between real life and a dream. So no, it isn’t love, but it burns like it, until they soothe the flames away with a touch. So maybe it’s love still.





	The In-Between Moments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anastasiapullingteeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anastasiapullingteeth/gifts).



> Five years ago, anastasiapullingteeth posted a Jehan/Grantaire fic on Valentine’s Day. I absolutely loved it, and started talking to her thanks to it, and we’ve been super great friends ever since. So this fic is a gift for her in celebration of that, and of one of my favorite OTPs still.

Jehan watched Enjolras talk. He was listening as well, although the words weren't what he was focused on. Something about the article Joly had promised to write for the ABC's blog, and what exactly he was to include in it. It wasn't immediately relevant to Jehan, so the young man didn't feel bad for being inattentive.

Instead, he watched the person in front of him, mapping the lines of eir face, the waves of eir golden hair. Most fascinating of all were eir eyes, their sharpness and focus as ey intently listened to one of Joly's comments. “Fire in eir eyes” was an overused phrase, but there was a reason some phrases stuck around. Looking at Enjolras' face was like looking into a flame. Just watching em would make warmth rise up in your body, until all you could think about was to reach out a hand despite the certainty of being burned.

Some people were just naturally like that. Naturally bright and meaningful. Others had to scrape by. Hustle. Fake it for so long that people didn't remember a time when you hadn't been so _interesting, promising, wonderful really_. Jehan saw himself strictly stuck in that second category. He didn't put himself down, not really. He really was an interesting, even _fascinating_ person. But he worked for it. He worked for it day and night. Cultivated himself, his words and his gestures.

Unlike Enjolras.

Jehan let out a melancholy sigh. The worst thing about Enjolras was perhaps the fact that it just wasn't possible to be resentful of eir charisma. That was the depth to which this quality ran in em. Desire, yes. Envy, yes. Resentment? Never. Enjolras was too pure for a thing like that. Ey created admiration. Sure, you wanted what ey had. Maybe you even wanted _em_. But you never felt like ey didn't _deserve_ who ey was. You couldn't even think about _stealing_ it. Instead, ey made you want to become this wonderful person by yourself.

The topic of conversation had changed. Grantaire had entered into a debate with Enjolras, about something or other. Jehan was still only half-listening, prefering to watch their facial expressions instead.

Enjolras was frowning, struggling to stay calm and neutral. Grantaire, on the other hand, was smiling sardonically, playing with his pen. He looked like he had not a care in the world, though Jehan knew better. Grantaire was like him. He built himself a persona and stuck to it. That didn't mean he wasn't _real_ , that he was lying or being someone other than himself. Not really. Both of them just worked hard to present an image to others that was as close as possible to the best self they could imagine themselves to be.

You couldn't say that Grantaire was lying when he was like this. You couldn't possibly say that when you saw how bright his eyes were, how he was leaning forward ever so slightly, despite trying to appear nonchalant. How, whenever Enjolras responded particularly pointedly to one of his comments, his smile would take on a sharper edge, one that could only be recognised as pride if you knew Grantaire well enough.

Grantaire wasn't lying. He was _alive_. He retreated behind a distant wall and pretended not to care so that, within himself, he could enjoy the brightness of the people around him to its fullest. He loved this so much that he could only ever do it half-heartedly. That was the only way not to get burned, not to be destroyed.

And so, for this too, Jehan had no resentment. He could envy the pure _love_ radiating from Grantaire as he argued with Enjolras. He could long, yearn for it. But he couldn't resent it. Because that would mean resenting a whole part of Grantaire. And Jehan couldn't do that. The most violent thing he could do was hate. He could hate parts of Grantaire, sometimes. He could even hate Grantaire as a person, as a whole. It had happened before. But he couldn't hate the fact that Grantaire existed, couldn't hate him to the point where he wished he wasn't there. It just wasn't possible. There was too much meaning attached to everything Grantaire was for Jehan to resent him.

And so Jehan longed. He yearned. He desired, and he envied. And in the end he was glad for it because that, too, was one way of being alive.

And, at the end of the day, when Enjolras and Grantaire had finished their argument, either because someone else had intervened, or because they had come to a stand-still on their own, at the end of the day, Grantaire would turn towards Jehan. He would turn towards Jehan because he too was longing, yearning, desiring and alive. He would turn towards Jehan and his pupils would be dilated, there would be a blush starting to crawl up his neck, and the two of them would share a smile. That smile wasn't a secret, not really. None of it was a secret. It was just that most people didn't care about finding out these kinds of things about each other, and so they didn't know.

 

Everyone always lingered in the café even after the meeting had officially come to a close, because they all enjoyed each other's company. The conversations shifted from politics to personal lives. Classes, family drama. Movies and books. Jehan participated more actively in those conversations. It wasn't that the political debates didn't interest him, on the contrary. He just needed more time than others to absorb arguments and form his own opinions. But when it came to books! He had so many opinions about those, well-formed if not always coherent, and he could have talked about them for hours.

Besides Grantaire, Marius was his favorite person to speak with. He, too, wasn't always sure of what he thought, even if in other ways he was more like Enjolras than Jehan. Marius didn't even think of hiding behind an act because, to him, creating a persona was much harder work than just _being_. Jehan liked him for that, for bringing nuance to the admiration he had for Enjolras' way of being. He also liked him because Marius was kind and open. And because they talked about books, about languages, about love and about life.

During those conversations, Grantaire was sometimes the one to take his turn to watch. He would nurse a bottle of wine and stay silent, or offer a few quips in another conversation, but his gaze remained on Jehan, even if just out of the corner of his eyes. The same kind of focus he would have when debating with Enjolras would then be displaced towards Jehan. It was a thrilling sensation, one that Enjolras sadly didn't seem to know how to appreciate. But Jehan did.

After too long of this game of trading gazes, both men would make their excuses, putting on a show of kissing everyone goodbye before they left. If nobody followed them immediately, they would trade one kiss, a deeper one, just beyond the door of the café, pretend that this was forbidden somehow, that it was the sense of danger urging them on and not just their own desire.

And then they would go home, whatever shape home took that day.

 

This time it was Jehan's flat, the better option since Grantaire was working on a new painting, which meant his own place was in disarray. Jehan's flat was small, about what you would expect from the kinds of places students can afford. At least, living a good half hour away from any campus meant that his rent was low enough that he didn't have to find a roommate.

It was small, kind of shitty, but it was _Jehan's_. As unmistakably Jehan's as the candles in empty wine bottles that littered his bathroom, wax sticking to the sides, or the pile of notebooks on his desk. There was a small portrait of him painted by Grantaire hanging on one wall, as well as bouquets of dried flowers on every surface that would hold them. It was one more way that Jehan had of playing at being himself.  He changed the rooms to reflect what he wanted others to see inside of him.

Whatever anyone had to say about the choice of decoration, however, the flat was functional. The small kitchen was the only place always kept impeccable, because although Jehan would go to great length for the aesthetic, food poisoning was not one of them. And, more importantly, his bedroom held a queen-sized bed.

They entered the flat casually. They weren't in a rush, they knew each other. No one was going anywhere, and so they could take the time to hang their jacket and put their shoes away. There was no stumbling across each other, no item abandonned where it didn't belong because they couldn't be bothered to think about it in the other's presence.

Instead, Jehan offered a cup of tea, and Grantaire accepted. Waiting was half the game. It was all about building anticipation until they felt like they would burst, until looking at each other nearly hurt and touch was the only remedy.

While the water boiled, Grantaire flipped through the notebook on top of Jehan's pile, distractedly reading a few lines of several poems. The smell of tea soon wafted through the room, and Grantaire found himself rythmically tapping his fingers against Jehan's desk.

Jehan was smiling, carrying two steaming mugs. His short, wavy ginger hair was like a copper halo around his face. Looking at the old portrait he had offered his friend, Grantaire itched to get more details right, to give recognition to the way the light played with the young man's eyes or the slight curve of his jaw.

Jehan recognized Grantaire's gaze, his artist's focus. He recognized the way it made his skin tingle, how it made him feel powerful. Most of Grantaire's art wasn't about beauty, not really. It was about presence, about energy. His portraits didn't want to make their subjects beautiful – although they did – but they wanted to immortalize the power to captivate that Grantaire recognized in them.

After this evening, after all the waiting, such a gaze raised shivers up and down Jehan's body. It made him want to _take, take, take_.

“Working on anything specific?” Grantaire asked after taking a sip of his jasmine tea. He pointed at the pile of notebooks.

Jehan shrugged and sat down on one of his couches, a dumpster rescue covered by a brightly-colored crocheted quilt. “Mostly stuff for magazine submissions. I haven't found my next big idea yet.”

Grantaire raised an eyebrow. “What about that modern epic thing?”

Jehan groaned. “It's just so much research! I keep getting lost on Wikipedia. So I'm... taking a break from it.”

Grantaire smiled knowingly. A big part of the notebook pile was composed of projects that the poet was taking a break from, just as Grantaire had a drawer full of half-finished sketches and preliminary studies for paintings. Inspiration was a fickle mistress.

Their conversation slowly tapered off as they both focused on finishing their mugs of tea, as well as on looking at each other. Even Jehan couldn't find words worthy to be added to the heat in their gazes.

The poet had barely dropped the now empty mugs into his sink that Grantaire was tugging on his wrist, half-dragging him to his bedroom. Jehan couldn't help but smile, and slid his fingers in-between Grantaire's before letting himself be carried off.

Grantaire stopped as soon as he had entered the bedroom, so Jehan took the lead. He climbed on the bed and tugged on Grantaire's hand until he followed, stumbling onto the mattress. This brought the both of them close together, and Jehan raised his gaze to meet his friend's. “Hey stranger.”

Grantaire smiled. “Hi,” he whispered just above Jehan's lips before leaning in and kissing the other man.

This kiss wasn't the same as their stolen kisses outside the Musain. It was thrilling in new ways. Not because it was forbidden but because it was such a known territory. The kiss was deep and intent. Jehan bit down slightly on Grantaire's lower lip, like he knew the other liked, and Grantaire responded by splaying his hand across Jehan's ribs under his shirt.

They knew each other, knew each other's bodies. If any touch was exploratory, it was because they wanted it to be, not out of necessity.

They broke away to catch their breath, letting their forehead touch so that they kept on breathing the same air. This was Jehan's favorite part of it all. These little in-between moments of pure intimacy, where none of them was actively pursuing their pleasure, instead just relishing in the easiness of the instant. Jehan breathed. Grantaire breathed. And, in that moment, that was enough, and it was perfect.

Then Jehan put his hands in Grantaire's hair and pulled, dragging a moan out of him and swallowing it in the same movement. The heat spiked up again between the both of them. Their bodies were clearly telling them that they had waited long enough.

Grantaire moved one of his knees up, straddling Jehan on either sides of one of his thighs. Jehan immediately took advantage of that position to buck his hips against him, which made Grantaire chuckle. He gave Jehan another quick kiss before pulling away and starting to unbutton the other man's shirt.

A second advantage to button ups – besides the fact they looked stylish as _heck_ – was that they turned undressing into a drawn-out, intimate process. Grantaire still made quick work of the shirt, considering. Jehan sat up to let him peel the garment from his shoulders. Once that was done, he buried his hands in Grantaire's curls once more, and the other man immediately folded in against him, kissing down from his cheek to the junction between his shoulder and his neck.

Jehan let his breath come out in a sigh, smiling as Grantaire began to suckle at his skin.

“Do you know how hot you looked earlier?” Jehan said. He grinned at the way Grantaire shuddered. He always did, when Jehan talked like that. Grantaire himself mostly kept quiet during sex, letting out only moans and curses. But he loved hearing others talk. And, well, Jehan was a poet after all. Wielding words was his job, although this situation called for a different vocabulary than what he was most used to.

“You get this little self-satisfied grin when you counter someone's argument, and it drives me insane.”

“Yeah?” Grantaire asked, looking up with pupils blowned wide.

“Mmh-mmh,” Jehan replied around a chuckle. “You forget to be self-conscious when you're like that.”

That comment earned him a frown. “Are you talking dirty or psychoanalysing me?”

Before Jehan could open his mouth, Grantaire had put one of his hand over it. “Don't answer. I know you'll say _why not both_ and I would really rather not talk about my daddy issues in bed.”

Jehan shrugged, entirely unapologetic, and Grantaire and him dissolved into giggles at the same time. Jehan felt light and carefree, out of his mind in the best of way.

And then Grantaire went in with the tickles.

And then war was on.

Jehan immediately pushed Grantaire off him. Not undressing Grantaire immediately had apparently been a tactical mishap, since he couldn't reach the extremely ticklish spot on the back of Grantaire's knees. Grantaire – on the other hand – has easy access to all of his chest and his armpits, and made good use of that advantage.

They play-fought for a few minutes, tickles evolving into a struggle to push each other off the bed. And then Grantaire managed to grab Jehan's wrists and hold them over his head while he kissed his nose, and all fighting instincts rushed out of Jehan in one breath.

He wrinkled his face. “Stop being cute, I already like you too much.”

Grantaire grinned. “I feel like that should be _my_ line, every single day.”

He bent down helpfully, allowing Jehan to pluck the compliment from his lips.

This brought them a step back to their earlier mood, although much of the anticipation had been dissipated. Neither of them really minded.

Still, Jehan was quick to remedy his earlier mistakes, and broke away from the kiss to pull Grantaire's shirt over his head. He ran a hand across the other man's chest like it was still a privilege to do so. After all, it was. And then he used the other hand to scratch his nails down the whole length of Grantaire's back.

“Oh fuck,” Grantaire groaned. His hips bucked forward involuntarily despite the fact he was barely half-hard. Jehan took it as a victory.

“Yeah, that's kind of the plan.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes, still hovering above him, his weight on his hands on both sides of Jehan's face. “That line is the biggest of clichés. You're a poet, you can do better.”

Jehan tried – and failed, like always – to quirk an eyebrow. “I know you've read my poetry. Do you really think talking about existential anguish would be a more effective way to woo you?”

“Wooing? Is that what you're doing?”

“Well, I would be, but you're making it really hard.”

From the glint in Grantaire's eyes, Jehan knew exactly what he was going to say.

“I thought that was the point?” He punctuated that sentence with a press of his hand against Jehan's crotch.

“You're insufferable.”

“Yeah, but you still-”

Jehan interrupted him by pushing him on his side and then immediately drawing him in for a kiss. Grantaire opened his mouth to it enthusiastically, settling one hand on Jehan's lower back to bring him impossibly closer. Grantaire's lips were always chapped, but Jehan didn't mind. It had become part of the habit, and he liked the habit very much. It was a part of Grantaire, and he liked Grantaire very much.

And maybe that wasn't the same as the way Grantaire loved Enjolras. Maybe it wasn't the same as the way romance novels talked about love. But Jehan did love Grantaire, and he let him know that, as clearly as he could, with a press of his tongue and a tug on his hair.

“I think you should take your pants off,” Jehan added aloud. “I really want to get my hands on you.”


End file.
